“If your city wants to focus on one topic for reducing traffic congestion, improving housing affordability, cleaning the air, lessening climate change, making government more efficient, and enlivening the economy – all at the same time – then it should focus on parking.” As Jeffrey Tumlin notes, parking – in particular if implemented poorly – consumes land, is expensive (especially in the case of free parking), reduces housing affordability, worsens traffic congestion, causes emissions, pollutes our rivers and seas, and can destroy walkable urbanism.

This blogpost – which was prepared for the “Next-Generation Tools of the Trade” module of SFU’s Next-Generation Transportation Certificate Program – examines how Vienna’s “Parkraumbewirtschaftung” parking management policy improved the city’s overall parking situation and reduced car traffic while also reaping positive economic and environmental benefits. It evaluates the policy’s strengths and weaknesses and concludes with recommendations to further improve this policy which has become the city’s central and most effective tool to improve urban traffic.

A Primer on Parking Management

Parking management and parking pricing are considered the most effective transportation demand management (TDM) tools. Demand management policies do not simply give motorists more of what they think is required (i.e. more capacity) but involve measures that moderate demand, limit traffic capacity, or increase costs for individual users to better reflect social costs involved.

TDM solutions also support more strategic planning objectives such as reducing development costs and increasing affordability, fostering more compact and multi-modal community planning (smart growth), encouraging the use of alternative modes, improving design flexibility, accommodating new uses and responding to new demands, and reducing impervious surface.

The city aims at a reduction of car traffic and environmental pollution, an improvement of public transit, the overall parking situation, economic accessibility (business and shopping traffic), and residential environments, as well as more space, higher traffic safety, and additional income for sustainable urban traffic.

In 1993, the 1st district became the first district-wide short-term parking zone. In the following years, area-wide short-term parking was extended to districts 6 to 9 (1995), 4 and 5 (1997), and 2, 3 and 20 (1999), covering the whole area within the second ring road. In 2012/13, a second major extension included district 15 and parts of districts 12, 14, 16, and 17.

Overview of first expansion (red) and second expansion (blue and yellow (Zone 15 SH))

Policy Evaluation

On-road parking management (paid parking zones, limitation of parking duration, residents’ parking privilege, etc.) is considered one of the most effective traffic demand management measures, in particular as it internalizes the external costs of car users with the help of parking fees. Studies from Vienna’s first and second expansion of area-wide short-term parking zones provide supporting evidence as they show a significant decline in demand for parking spaces and occupancy rates (see charts below):

Reduction in average parking spaces occupancy rates from 109% to 71% in the morning and from 108% to 89% in the evening

Reduction in unauthorized parking by 86% (morning) and 76% (evening)

Reduction in car traffic (reduction in traffic volumes in secondary streets network by 26% due to reduction in traffic in search for parking spaces from 10 to 3.3 million passenger car kilometres annually)

Increase in free parking spaces for residents, contributing to increase in favourable opinion towards the policy from 46% (before) to 67% (after)

Reduction in parked cars not from Vienna by two thirds (morning)

Higher than expected amount of parking stickers (74% in after-survey vs. 56% in before-survey) and higher than expected mode shift to public transport (25% in after-survey vs. 15% in before-survey) while only 5% of drivers parked their cars in neighbouring districts not under management

To reap these benefits, it is crucial that Vienna uses several other measures and policies that accompany its parking space management policy, such as a recent increase in short-term parking fees, enough capacity and high quality public transit, an affordable annual public transit pass for only EUR 365, Park & Ride facilities, municipal housing garages or recent changes in its building code to reduce minimum parking requirements.

However, major challenges are to avoid rebound effects by introducing traffic calming measures and converting parking spaces into public space for functions of higher value and to further extend the area covered by parking space management as this can only be decided by the individual districts with different political leadership (the City of Vienna has no legislative power for a city-wide approach).

Recommendations

While Vienna’s Parking Space Management clearly achieves the desired results, in particular a significant reduction in parking spaces occupancy rates, there is still room for improvement, especially given the policy’s stated weaknesses:

Clear roadmap and legislative power for a city-wide approach: Vienna should develop a roadmap for the further expansion of the area under parking space management and think about transferring executive power from the districts to the City to foster a coherent, city-wide approach. Given the experiences and public support for such policies, citizens should be given more power to push their districts into this direction.

Foster measures to prevent long-term rebound effects: To prevent long-term rebound effects, it is crucial to introduce traffic calming measures and to reduce parking spaces to use this public space for functions of higher value (transit, cycling/walking, attractive public spaces).

Extend short-term parking in latest expansion areas: After the latest expansion, occupancy rates increase again in high density areas as it becomes easier to find empty parking spaces, particularly in the evening. It makes sense to extend short-term parking until 10 pm in these areas too or to introduce variable parking fees based on available parking spaces.

Reduce the size of parking zones: Similarly, it would make sense to reduce the size of larger short-term parking zones to discourage inner-zone traffic (amounting to a third of all parking processes) which became attractive again (no additional parking fees, lots of empty parking spaces).

Complement the policy with access management or road pricing: Generally, it makes sense to combine parking management with access management/control and/or road/congestion pricing into integrated congestion-response packages, thereby also tackling through traffic and building on each approach’s relative strengths. Given the high share of commuters, access management or a congestion charge at the city’s boundaries would be more effective than just for the already well performing inner districts.

Notes: Values above 100% are due to unauthorized parking. Zone 15 SH is a special zone around Stadthalle event venue (yellow zone on map) which already had a different short-term parking regulation in the evening before.

[…] for public transport for 365 Euros, which led to an impressive 100% increase in sold tickets, the very controversial parking management, highly popular only after it was introduced, and the even more controversial transformation of […]